Controversy claims Shoaib book launch

The scheduled release of Shoaib Akhtar’s book in Mumbai on Sunday has been cancelled, with the organisers giving no reasons. Former India skipper Dilip Vengsarkar was to release Akhtar’s autobiography ‘Controversially Yours’ at the Cricket Club of India (CCI) premises. “The event has been cancelled,” confirmed a CCI official, without assigning any reason.

According to sources, the sudden cancellation may be because of less than flattering remarks about Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid in the book. Akhtar has made many controversial claims, such as Tendulkar did not have the ability to finish matches in the initial stages of his career. Meanwhile, a protest was held in suburban Dahisar on Saturday against Akhtar, for his comments on Tendulkar. Protesters carried Akthar’s posters on donkey-backs.

Full report here Indian Express

NCP, Sena lock horns over Akhtar book

Worried that the Sharad Pawar-led NCP may steal a march over the Shiv Sena in connection with Shoaib Akhtar's autobiography which reportedly contains controversial remarks about Sachin Tendulkar, Sena leader Uddhav Thackeray asked Dilip Vengsarkar to keep away from the book release function.

Akthar's autobiography was to be released at a function in Mumbai on Saturday. However, the event was cancelled even as the 'Rawalpindi Express' gave interviews to the electronic media about the book.

Akhtar has lashed out against his own team members in the book and is understood to have made remarks about the Indian batting master, who he claimed was afraid of his bowling as the delivery speed was over 150 kph. Uddhav is believed to have sent instructions to Vengsarkar to keep away from the controversial cricketer as Akhtar's remarks against Tendulkar have triggered a global backlash. Former Pakistan captain Wasim Akram has ridiculed the remarks and said it was an attempt to market his book before its official release on Sunday.

Full report here Times of India

Review: Last Man in Tower

review

Last Man in Tower
Aravind Adiga
HarperCollins
Rs. 699
Pp 432
ISBN: 9789350290842
Hardcover

About the book
Ask any Bombaywallah about Tower A of the Vishram Co-operative Housing Society and you will be told that it is unimpeachably pucca. Despiteits location close to the airport and bordered by slums, it has been pucca for some fifty years. But then Bombay has changed in half a century not least its name – and the world in which Tower A was first built is giving way to a new city, a Mumbai of new development and new money; of wealthy Indians returning with fortunes made abroad.

When real estate developer Dharmen Shah offers to buy out the residents of Vishram Society, planning to use the site to build a luxury apartment complex, his offer is more than generous. Yet not everyone wants to leave; many of them have lived in Vishram for years, many of them are no longer young. But none can benefit from the offer unless all agree to sell. As tensions rise, one by one those who oppose the offer give in to the pressure of the majority, until only one man stands in the way of Shah’s luxury high-rise: Masterji, a retired schoolteacher, once the most respected man in the building. Shah is a dangerous man to refuse, but as the demolition deadline looms, Masterji’s neighbours – friends who have become enemies, acquaintances turned co-conspirators – may stop at nothing to score their payday. A suspense-filled story of money and power, luxury and deprivation; a rich tapestry peopled by unforgettable characters, not least of which is Bombay itself, Last Man in Tower opens up the hearts and minds of the inhabitants of a great city – ordinary people pushed to their limits in a place that knows none.

Reviews:
Full review here Guardian
If the residents of Tower A, Vishram Society, pride themselves on anything, it is their respectability – their "pucca" way of life in their "unimpeachably pucca" apartment building. Once pink, Tower A may now be a "rainwater-stained, fungus-licked grey"; it may not boast an uninterrupted supply of running water; it may sit amid the slums of Vakola, in the flight path of Mumbai's domestic airport; and it may be falling into a state of disrepair unchecked by its ineffectual secretary. But Vishram Society's virtues outweigh its failings; a model of neighbourliness and middle-class virtue, it brings together those of different backgrounds – originally built for a Catholic population, it admitted Hindus in the 1960s and "the better kind of Muslim" in the 80s – in harmonious testimony to the possibility of cooperative living. That, at least, is the theory, although Aravind Adiga's painful tragicomedy demolishes it more quickly than Dharmen Shah, his ruthless property developer, throws up his luxury redevelopments.

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Full review here Telegraph
In his first, Man Booker-winning novel, The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga captured the contradictions of the new India; in this, his third book, he goes further: they are quite literally the building blocks of his plot.

Last Man in Tower tells the story of a struggle for a slice of shining Mumbai real estate, bringing all of Adiga’s gifts for sharp social observation and mordant wit to the fore.
The “last man” of the title is Yogesh Murthy, or “Masterji” as he is affectionately known, a retired schoolteacher who gives top-up science classes in his spare time. He lives in a crumbling but “absolutely, unimpeachably pucca” middle-class block of flats in the Vishram Housing Society. The water only works for a couple of hours twice a day and each monsoon threatens to bring the roof in; but this is still an idyll representing what was once, itself, “new India”. Citizens of every religion rub along together in a way, Adiga writes, that would have made Nehru proud.

-o-o-o-Full review here Hindustan Times
There comes a point in Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City, a chronicle of his love-hate relationship with Bombay, where he takes Paul Theroux’s ‘Bombay-smells-of-money’ argument up by a notch to conclude, “Bombay is a city in which everything is on broad, public display. Nothing is hidden.” This simplistic observation stands apart from the rest of the book, which repeatedly asserts that you cannot describe Bombay in black and white, for beneath the surface of this seemingly monochromatic megalopolis lies a vibrant spectrum of greys.

This is where Aravind Adiga enters with his third book (and second novel) Last Man In Tower. If people, not steel and glass, impart Mehta’s florid and fragile Bombay its character, Adiga’s admiration for Mumbai forms the foundation of his latest novel.

“I was born in India, raised here and I love it here,” says Adiga. But that love didn’t go unopposed. In 2008, Adiga faced the ire of self-styled nationalists who read too much into the journalist-turned-author’s debut novel The White Tiger (which went on to win the Man Booker Prize), and involuntarily transformed him into a critic of India’s social and economic dichotomies. The story of the clash of an advancing India with its primitive self, where the eponymous character-narrator Balram Halwai’s “schematic and limited” vision of life was mistaken to be that of Adiga’s, exposed to the world a nation caught with its pants down, ‘loyalists’ felt.


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Full review here Financial Times
Land, today, has become the most valuable resource in India, lying at the dark confluence of politics, money, business and pure human avarice. With the economy growing at breakneck pace, the pressure for the acquisition and development of land has never been greater. Nowhere is this more obvious than in Mumbai, India’s commercial capital. As rents and property prices have skyrocketed, so has grown the public outcry against the city’s rapacious redevelopment. A veteran journalist lamented recently that every government in the region “has been the government of the builders, by the builders and for the builders”.

Aravind Adiga’s latest novel Last Man in Tower examines this sharpening crisis from the perspective of the residents of an old apartment block in north-west Mumbai. Vishram Society “is anchored like a dreadnought of middle-class respectability” in a neighbourhood populated by slums. Despite its peeling paint and 47-year-old brickwork, the grandmotherly building is spoken of with reverence because its residents “pay taxes, support charities, and vote in local and general elections”.

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Full review here DNA

Last Man In Tower is set in Tower A of the Vishram Co-operative Housing society in Vakola, Mumbai. It is an aging, run-down apartment building inhabited by a disappearing breed, the middle class. The occupants of Tower A are a closely knit bunch, having supported each other through many crises, trials and tragedies. Yet, when a builder approaches the society with a lucrative offer, friendships that have spanned decades start to fall apart.

The novel takes for inspiration a phenomenon that has swept every Indian metro in recent years: middle class families wooed by sky-rocketing property prices sell their modest homes and move into penthouses, swapping their scooters for cars, Godrej almaris for imported teak cupboards, thrifty habits for a lifestyle of affluence. In Adiga’s Last Man In Tower, a retired sixty-one year old science teacher, ‘Masterji’, is the last man to resist the builder’s offer.

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Full review here GQ India

When Aravind Adiga’s debut novel The White Tiger swept to victory in the Man Booker Prize, instead of throwing bouquets, Indian critics threw brickbats. A barrage of epithets, rather unfairly, rained in: stereotypical, dull, demeaning and tedious.

The writer’s third novel, Last Man in Tower, might not change their minds entirely. A taut, visceral tale based in Mumbai, this literary pot-boiler probes urban redevelopment, a festering sore in a city where land is scarce and invaluable. Adiga’s minutely detailed and almost voyeuristic insights into the lives of the dwellers of a cosmopolitan housing society are bigger than the plot, though.

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Full review here Washington Post 

Funny, provocative and decadent: Aravind Adiga’s “Last Man in Tower” is the kind of novel that’s so richly insightful about business and character that it’s hard to know where to begin singing its praises.

That Adiga knows economics well should come as no surprise. After all, he worked as a financial journalist for Time magazine in India, and his first novel, “The White Tiger,” reveled in the darker consequences of a world turned flat. The story described a servant seduced by visions of wealth who murders his way out of poverty. It was as popular as it was controversial in India, and in Britain it captured the Man Booker Prize.

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Full review here Seattle Times

Aravind Adiga, winner of the Man Booker Prize for "The White Tiger," brings readers another look at an India at once simple and complex, as old as time and brand new.

The Mumbai residents of Tower A, Vishram Society, get along very well; Catholic, Muslim and Hindu sharing what was once a thoroughly first-class building. Their home is now short on light and running water, long on flaking, rainwater-stained walls and in need of the periodic services of the seven-kinds-of-vermin man.

Despite these shortcomings, Vishram dwellers are content, until they meet Dharmen Shah, an eminently successful and ruthless developer and his "left-hand man," the enforcer, Shanmugham.

Shah, who is not a well man, wants to ensure his legacy by building "The Shanghai," a modern high-rise, on the site of Tower A. He offers each tenant more money than any of them could amass in a lifetime, just to relocate. This offer is met with great rejoicing all around, except by one person: Yogesh A. Murthy, known as "Masterji," age 61, a retired schoolteacher and a recent widower.


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Full review here Independent

In Mumbai, property development is a serious business. Sometimes deadly serious.

Prime land is costly; human life is cheap. The Vishram Society is a middle-class housing co-operative based in a block to the city's east. The area has become intensely desirable, and property developer Dharmen Shah is determined to tear Vishram down and replace it with luxury apartments. Yet not all Vishram's residents are willing to be bought out, despite Shah's generous offers. Opposition centres around Yogesh Murthy, nicknamed "Masterji", an obdurate retired teacher and widower.

Aravind Adiga is most famous, of course, for his Booker prize-winning novel The White Tiger. It told the story of a downtrodden servant who was willing to go to shocking extremes to get the better of his masters. Subtle it wasn't, but the savage energy of its satire could not be ignored. Adiga's next volume, Between the Assassinations, was a collection of stories set in a fictitious southern Indian town, also focussing on poverty and corruption. In it, Adiga's facility with language came further to the fore in a series of evocative cameos that captured the town's stagnation.

India gets comic relief

We explore how worldwide comic favourites have been given a desi flavour 

When film-crazy Raj Patel showed up in Riverdale four years ago, little did Archie Comics fans realize that their favourite freckled redhead and his pals would soon make a trip to India. In issues No. 9 and 10 of World of Archie, the gang travels to Mumbai with Raj, where they have a brush with Bollywood, get a taste of samosas and vindaloo and wear kurtas, saris and lehengas. Archie and Co. aren't the only iconic comic book characters to get an Indian flavour. Last year, the entire Tintin series was translated into Hindi; and in 2004, Spider-Man came to India in the form of Pavitr Prabhakar. But how well does giving comic characters a desi twist work?

Maha market
Suresh Seetharaman, CEO of an animation company, says this is a smart way for Archie Comics to tap into a country like India, where they have a huge presence. "I assume that India is a key market for them. It looks like Archie is aggressively getting their product out and making inroads into different markets where they have a brand presence. Moreover, one of the most influential communities in the US is the Indian diaspora. So if you've introduced an Indian character to the series, it makes sense to have the characters travel India," he says.

Full report here Times of India 

A tribute to Saadat Manto

He was reputed as one of the best short story tellers of the 20th century, chronicling the events during and after the partition of India in 1947. But Saadat Hassan Manto was also the most controversial writer of that time and was tried six times for obscenity for his Urdu works.

And so now, producer Sunil Bohra and Vipin Sharma, who played Darsheel's father in Taare Zameen Par, are all geared up to pay tribute to Manto. Reportedly, the two are working on a play based on Manto's story Toba Tek Singh.

A source informed that the play, which will be held in a five-star hotel in Mumbai in November, will have Sharma acting and directing the play.

"Sanjay Chouhan is writing the play for Sunil Bohra. The play will be based on Saadat Hasan Manto's story Toba Tek Singh, a powerful satire based on the relationship between India and Pakistan.

Full report here Times of India 

Kaleidoscopic reality

Lost and Found is about the truth governing our times: the violence of irrationality.

There is no dearth of books with Mumbai either occupying the centre stage or in the background. The city of perennial paradoxes goes on sending up anguished flares to attract the imagination of writers, poets, novelists and chroniclers. And, the latest catch is the poet-turned-novelist, C.P. Surendran's second novel, Lost and Found. But, Surendran's aim, obviously, is not to depict the incomprehensible entirety of the Mumbai life. Nor its mind-blowing contradictions. But to carve a complex but telling image out of its inner turbulence.

Narrative device
Lost and Found's story draws out its credulity to the limit. Narrated simply, it may seem a parody of a stereotypical Bollywood movie of a bygone era. But it is from this incredulity that the novel sources its strength and vibrancy.

The entire series of incidents start off with 35-year-old Lakshmi, now working as a content provider for an online firm, kidnapping Placid Hari Odannur, a freelancer who she believes was the man who raped her on the last train from Churchgate to Virar, 16 years ago. But the description borders on ambivalence as to whether it was in fact a rape or consensual sex.

Full report here Hindu

Queens without crowns

Well researched, this book is a tribute to the women who have made significant inroads into Mumbai's criminal underbelly.

Mafia Queens of Mumbai 
Stories of Women from
the Ganglands
S.Hussain Zaidi, Jane Borges
Tranquebar Press
Rs 250; Pp 308
ISBN 9789380283777
Paperback

It couldn't get feistier than this you think on reading the title and immediately conjure up images of gorgeous molls lolling on the arms of cigar-puffing villains sporting mismatched shoes. But Mafia Queens of Mumbai: Stories of Women from the Ganglands is nothing like what you'd expect. A cool clinical tribute to the women who made significant inroads into the infamous arena of Mumbai's criminal underbelly, the extensively researched work of journalists S. Hussain Zaidi and Jane Borges, besides enlightening one on the ways of lady gangsters, informs, enthrals and very frequently chills the reader down to his bone-marrow.

No stereotypes
There are no stereotypes in the world of crime, it is established at the every onset, and not every woman criminal is pushed into crime by unfortunate circumstances (as generally depicted in movies and literature). Some women are born to crime, some others chase it relentlessly and yet some others have crime thrust on them. And then there are those others who choose to channel their genius towards darker goals for the sheer adrenalin rush it entails. Thus we have the imperturbable Lallan Bhabhi, a cog in the petrol adulteration cartel, Sapna Didi, a rare woman who had the guts to stand up to Dawood Ibrahim, liquor queen Jenabai Daaruwali and the iconic brothel madam, Gangubai Kathiawadi. A rare touch given by the authors is the perennial riches-to-rags possibility hovering over each head and which seems to deter not a single of these women. As Zaidi and Borges lead one down the dark dinghy alleys of Dongri, Bhendi Bazaar, Nagpada, Dharavi and Mumbra, it becomes difficult to forget characters like the dainty bereaved Ashraf who turns into a gun-toting avenger, the charismatic Gangubai who lights up the streets of Kamathipura with a rare dignity or the bootlegging aunties. There is no attempt to romanticise the real-life stories or add unnecessary embroidery for added texture. Consequently, there is an element of starkness, a bleakness of approach that is very brave, yet strangely unsettling for the reader. One wishes the authors had added further dimensions by a deeper exploration of the complexities within each character. Some of the motives and choices made by the protagonists remain fuzzy and perplexing to the very end.

The booking window

Screen adaptations of books usually need to add lashings of spicing to the plainness of the printed page

Aravind Adiga’s hugely enjoyable novel Last Man in Tower (if the adjective enjoyable can be used to describe an account of one man’s lone battle against rapacious neighbours and a powerful builder) is crying out loud to be made into a movie.

Screen adaptations of books usually need to add lashings of spicing to the plainness of the printed page; Adiga already has flavour by the ladlefuls. He portrays the city as a breathing, hissing sentient being, and his richly atmospheric descriptions of the housing society that former schoolteacher Murthy seeks to prevent from redevelopment, as well as Mumbai itself, are purely cinematic.

Last Man in Tower is supposed to be a contemporary tale but the story and characters are reminiscent of parallel films from the 1980s. Was Adiga among the thousands of Indians who plopped down before Doordarshan on Sundays at 1pm in the old days to watch socially conscious regional language cinema? The book harks back to films like Tabarana Kathe, in which Charu Hasan wages a Camus-worthy battle against governmental bureaucracy for his pension. Or Veedu, starring Archana as a middle-class woman trying to buy a house. Or even the films of Saeed Mirza that depicted the travails of the working class in Mumbai. Most of all, the novel reminded me of Mahesh Bhatt’s Saaransh, one of the director’s finest movies. Anupam Kher’s schoolteacher Pradhan, who is mourning the death of his son, finds a reason to live when his tenant, who is pregnant by the son of a Bal Thackeray-like politician, wants to keep her baby. Adiga’s Masterji too is haunted by the past like Pradhan, and perhaps Kher, who started his acting career with Saaransh, could be recruited to play yet another schoolteacher fighting the good fight in another time.

Full report here Mint 

Marketing students asked to sell Bapu's bio

Professor feels the book is undervalued, while its demand increases pre-Gandhi Jayanti

The Bombay Sarvodaya Mandal (BSM) at Tardeo regularly sells a hundred copies of Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography, My Experiments With Truth.

Recently however, there was a different demand for this organisation that is committed to propagating Gandhi's literature, when Professor Dr P S Prasad of Powai-based institute, NITIE called in asking for 10,000 copies of the book.

Prasad, a faculty of marketing at the institute, has assigned the 180 students of the final year the task to sell the book across the city.

Starting today (Gandhi Jayanti), these students will be seen selling the autobiography at various places in the city including streets, railway stations, and corporate offices, among others.

When asked about the inception of the idea, Prasad said, "Gandhi's book is 24-karat truthfulness. In the educational institution, we have a curriculum but the technique is missing.

Full report here Mid Day

Gandhi's autobiography is among top sellers

At a time when the country is ridden with violence, corruption and deceit, it would surprise many to know that Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography, which gives the message of truth, non-violence and peace, is one of the top-selling books, says a Gandhian.

"This is true since 257,000 copies were sold last year," says TRK Somaiya, programme co-ordinator, Bombay Sarvodaya Mandal, an organisation that promotes Gandhian principles.

"And to spread the message of peace of the Mahatma today, when his 141st birth anniversary will be celebrated across the country, more than 15,000 copies of Gandhi's My Experiments with Truth, an autobiography, will be sold by management students of the National Institute of Industrial Engineering at Mumbai's shopping malls, offices, schools and colleges," he said.

The demand for the book went up in 1984 after the release of Richard Attenborough's film Gandhi, at around the same time the Gandhi Book Centre started. Today, the Centre has 250 titles on Gandhi, in different languages. Though sales of these books went down for a while, Somaiya says they have recently increased. "It went up after the release of Bollywood film Lage Raho Munnabhai which dwelt with Gandhian ideals," he said.

Full report here Gulfnews

Indian, French poets to translate each other’s works

For poetry lovers in the city, this weekend will be a rare, multi-lingual treat — three poets from Mumbai, coming together with three from France, reading some of each others’ best contemporary verse in English, French and even Marathi. The French poets Caroline Sagot-Duvaroux, Danielle Memoire and Franck Andre Jamme, have been in the city for the past five days, having their work translated into English and Marathi by three Mumbai bards in intense workshops at the Alliance Francaise.

“It’s important to have poets translate other poets, since they can best convey a poetic musicality and cadence,” said poet Sampurna Chattarji, who, along with Mustansir Dalvi, has translated the French verses into English. These were then further rendered into Marathi by poet Hemant Divate.  

The intense translation workshops as well as the public readings on September 25 and 27 are part of ‘Import/Export’, a translation exchange programme organised by the International Centre of Poetry, Marseille (cipM), a French poetry forum. Every year, the programme promotes inter-cultural translation between poets from Marseille and another city, and for this year’s Mumbai-Marseille edition, cipM has collaborated with the Delhi French Embassy and the PEN All-India Centre.

Full report here Hindustan Times

Former financier writes of love in the new India

Former investment banker Anish Trivedi portrays a changing India in his debut novel where coffee and croissants are on the breakfast menu and youngsters earn more than their fathers ever did. Call Me Dan, recently launched in India, is a light-hearted look at the new India where arranged marriages and one-night stands are part of the protagonist's search for love.

The novel revolves around Gautam Joshi, aka Dan, a 30-year-old call centre executive in Mumbai with a penchant for late nights and women. Trivedi, who lives in Mumbai, gave up Wall Street to run a media company, act, host radio, and write. He has written two plays. He spoke to Reuters about his career shift and writing:

Did you set out to write about Mumbai and India's youth?
"I wanted to write about the change that today's youth are seeing in India and how it has made a change in their lives. While earlier generations were amongst the first to be born in a free India, this is the first to be born in the country after economic reforms and liberalisation were introduced. After decades of experimenting with socialism and government control over all aspects of our lives, we now have a society that flourishes in one of the most dynamic economies in the world. As the protagonist in 'Call Me Dan' says, we skipped a generation compared to the rest of the world."

Full report here Moneycontrol

One for the road

Using an autorickshaw as a marketing medium by publishing a magazine just for passengers and selling advertising space on the vehicle

Dedhia (left) and Mehta successfully partnered with
autorickshaw drivers

Three college friends, Mulchand Dedhia, 24, Simi Sailopal, 23, and Ishan Mehta, 23, started working on the concept a year ago. After completing his graduation in mass communication, Dedhia, who is also a part-time photographer, got a job at an advertising agency. He quit after an altercation with his boss and decided he would finally work on his dream of starting something on his own. Sailopal was working with a public relations agency and Mehta was a content writer with Hungama Digital Media Entertainment. Sailopal left the project midway, opting for further studies.

The three friends got together for a brainstorming session and hit upon the idea of exploiting spaces within and outside an autorickshaw for advertising. This led to the idea of launching a dedicated magazine for auto travellers—this way they could sell advertising space in the magazine. In October, they discussed the idea and the first issue of the monthly Meter Down was launched in March in Mumbai. They realized a consumer usually spends at least 10-15 minutes in an auto. The brands would get audience attention for those 15 minutes, more than any other medium could provide, Dedhia adds.

They commissioned a survey of 200 people and studied travelling patterns. “There’s so much traffic now and the people who are travelling get bored. We found that they either call friends and increase their phone bills, listen to music or just don’t do anything. We thought we’d make their boring ride a little fun,” says Dedhia.

In Mumbai, finding the written word

Mumbai is home to a growing number of chain bookstores - well-lit, air-conditioned spots that often host book launches and stock the latest best-sellers from Indian and international authors. But bibliophiles looking to ferret out bargains or rare finds shouldn't end their search without digging a little more deeply, from decades-old shops to street stalls.

Start at the appropriately, if unimaginatively, titled New and Secondhand Bookshop (526, Kalbadevi Road, Dhobi Talao; 91-22-6524-1731). Opened in 1905, the shop has two cramped floors of shelves, sorted dutifully according to subject matter. These range from poetry to international politics, with many stops in between. A recent visit yielded a 1902 Edinburgh-published Jonathan Swift collection from the rare and out of print section.

As the result of a recent anti-hawker campaign, the pavements to the north of Hutatma Chowk (formerly Flora Fountain) aren't as dense with book stalls as they were five years ago. But this is still a fine place to find a wide range of new and used books, including current favorites like William Dalrymple and Amitav Ghosh, as well as Penguin classics, at a steep discount from the cover price. (Do, though, beware counterfeits when shopping.)

Full report here NDTV

The world of underworld

Aabid Surti's “Sufi – the Invisible Man of the Underworld” gives an insightful account of Mumbai's underworld

The success of the recently released Once Upon A Time in Mumbai is still fresh in our minds. What made it impressive was the story behind the making of the smugglers of Bombay of the 1970s — now called underworld dons. The era of the '70s saw the height of gold smuggling, and names like Haji Mastan, Karim Lala, Yusuf Patel and Vardabhai emerged as famous gangsters.

Aabid Surti's Sufi – The Invisible Man of the Underworld, just published by Diamond Pocket Books, compassionately tells the story of the making of Mumbai's organised crime world.

“Sufi…” is actually a biography that the 78-year-old author prefers to call a ‘jugalbandi' with Iqbal Rupani (alias Sufi) — a dreaded name in the Bombay underworld but a devout Muslim. Both grew up in the dark alleys of Dongri — the centre of smuggling activities in the '70s — and saw “how people like Haji Mastan, Karim Lala, Yusuf Patel and other dons progressed step-by-step and how poor Muslims turned to crime, apart from the nexus between politicians and criminals,” says the author. The 410-page book covers the period between 1935 and 1965 and “all the characters and their names are true”, he asserts. ”I am aware of that life as I have grown up in that ghetto where I have seen Karim Lala as the supreme don, Haji Mastan moving up the ladder and Dawood Ibrahim playing gulli-danda with other kids,” says Surti who, like the above mentioned names came from an extremely poor family who could barely manage two meals a day.

Full review here Hindu

Kannada litterateur's books set for release

The metro’s well known Kannada litterateur Ravi Ra Anchan’s two books – Nelada Dani and Viveka Chintane will be released in Mumbai on Saturday, September 18.

Chandrashekar Palettady, editor of metro published Karnataka Malla, Kannada daily will release the books at a function scheduled to be held at Kannada Bhavan High School and Junior College, Fort.

A T Shetty, chairman of Kannada Bhavan Education Society will preside and litterateur Sa Daya and columnist Gopal Trasi will deliver the foreword on the books.

full report here Daijiworld

Re-reading history to 'bridge' the Partition

He was only 18 years old when he was forced to summarily pack up his life in Lahore and cross over to India during Partition in 1947. It has now been 63 years and he leads a comfortable life in Mumbai but his tired eyes can still vividly recall the day at Bhatinda station where he saw Hindu rioters attacking truckloads of Muslims travelling to the other side of the border-he pleaded with fellow Hindus to spare two aged Muslim men who were bleeding but the rioters did not relent. They had already stripped the ailing men off and had found out that they were Muslims, so they "could not be allowed to go".

Such heartrending personal accounts of the Partition are being documented by a group of students of Cathedral and John Connon School, J B Petit, Dhirubhai Ambani International School, H R College and Jai Hind College in Mumbai  to help the youth have an unbiased understanding of the historical event. "We belong to the second post-Independence generation. We aren't directly affected by Partition but are suffering its after-effects in the form of wars and insurgency. Most young people are limited by the scope of their history textbooks," says Ria Mirchandani, who along with friends Zara Rustomji, Kunal Mehta, Niyati Mahimtura, Raghav Sawhney and Shawn Wadia, hopes to generate an unpartisan view of the tragedy.

Full report here Times of India 

When Mr Bond held writers captive

At the ninth edition of the Vodafone Crossword Book Awards held in Mumbai on Friday, August 22, author Ruskin Bond’s presence not only charmed the audience, but also inspired upcoming authors.

The soft-spoken Bond was in a jocular mood, remarking how now that authors have become celebrities, they’d rather stay away from the limelight. “Writers are best read, but not seen in public, because most of them are not good-looking,” he said, leaving the audience in splits.

For Bond, anonymity has come at a hefty price. The author narrated an incident at a bookstore many years ago, when he spotted a copy of one of his books at the very bottom of a shelf. He said, “I took it and put it right on top. Unfortunately, the manager saw me and ordered me to keep it back, tell me that nobody ever bought the book. So just to teach him a lesson, I bought the book!”

Full report here DNA

'I found the novel as I wrote it'

Anjali Joseph, who lives in the UK but has spent much of her life in Mumbai, was recently chosen as one of the Telegraph’s Top 20 novelists in the UK under 40, a great accolade for a first-time novelist. IBNLive caught up with Anjali Joseph, the author of Saraswati Park

IBNLive: How long was ‘Saraswati Park’ in the making?
Anjali Joseph: Eighteen months. The ideation and the writing pretty much happened at the same time. I didn't start out with the entire thing in my head, I found it as I wrote.

IBNLive:: What DID you start with?
Anjali Joseph: A short story about Mohan (one of the three central characters) and the day that he found the booksellers were being evicted. So basically what became the first chapter of the novel.

IBNLive:: What made you decide to amplify it?
Anjali Joseph: I'd been writing short stories and with most of them there was no real sense in my head of 'What happens next?' But with this one I felt it was only a start. And a friend who read it asked me if it was the start of a novel. I said 'no no no' but thought 'maybe'... And then I just wrote a bit every day for the next six months or so till I had a draft.

IBNLive:: Six months is brilliant for a novel of what... 75,000 words?
Anjali Joseph: It's just under 70,000 words, but six months was for a raw first draft and then there were several more drafts.

Full interview here IBNLive

Home-grown mysteries

Afew weeks ago, I was driving through the streets of Kalbadevi, one of Mumbai's oldest and most colourful neighbourhoods, pointing out interesting historic landmarks to my eight-year-old son and nine-yearold niece. This is the building where cotton was first bought and sold, and this is the oldest temple in the city, I enthusiastically babbled. At some point, the children looked at me and said, "Can we please go to the mall in Phoenix Mills now?" And this is why I am grateful to Deepak Dalal for writing books like Sahyadri Adventure.

These two books, Anirudh's Dream and Koleshwar's Secret, are the latest in the 'Vikramaditya' series, adventures about two young boys Vikram and Aditya, who have been described as India's Hardy Boys. They love the great outdoors, live for adventure, and fight to save wildlife from poachers and evil traders. Dalal created his series of 'Indian tales for Indian children' way back in 1998. Dalal's first four books were set in India's most picturesque locales — Lakshadweep, Ladakh, the Andaman Islands and Ranthambore — and had a strong undercurrent of environmental activism.

Full report here Times of India